What Is CarStory? A Dealer's Guide to CarStory, Vast and Free Listings
CarStory is Vast's car-shopping site and dealer toolset. What carstory.com and carstory.ai are, what's free, where leads go, and how your cars get there.
Part of the Listings, photos & merchandising guide: Where to list your cars for leads — and how to be on every site at once
Switching from another DMS? Compare DealerVLO to DealerCenter, Frazer, or Lot Wizard, or see what DealerVLO's car dealer management software includes.
If you've seen "CarStory" on a lead email, a market report widget on a franchise store's site, or a listing you never posted yourself, you're not alone. CarStory gets searched a lot, and mostly by shoppers looking for the site. For a dealer the useful question is different: what is it, does it cost anything, and how do my cars get on it?
I run a used-car lot and built DealerVLO, the DMS my lot runs on, so I have a horse in the listing race. Here's what CarStory is today, read off its own sites on November 10, 2026, what it says is free, where its leads go, and what to ask before you sign up.
CarStory is Vast
The short version: CarStory is the brand of Vast, a company that has been in car listings and dealer data for years. Today vast.com redirects to carstory.com, and the footers on both CarStory sites credit "CarStory and Vast." CarStory started as a Vast product line: Vast's own 2017 announcement introduced CarStory Market Reports.
That matters to you for one reason. Vast is also the company that publishes dealer listings on Carfax.com through inventory feeds, and it's the partner DealerVLO sends its Carfax feed to. So when you see "Vast" in a feed setup screen and "CarStory" on a lead email, it's the same company.
There are two CarStory sites, and they're for different people:
- carstory.com is the shopper side: a car-shopping site that says it has "4 million+ new and used vehicles," with search by make, model, budget and payment.
- carstory.ai is the dealer side, where you sign up for CarStory's products and log in.
What CarStory sells to dealers
carstory.ai lists three products. Here's what each page says, and what it doesn't:
- Promote is the one most small lots care about. It says CarStory "syndicates your listings" to sites including Car and Driver, Autoblog and CarStory.com, and adds a market report to your website: a panel on each car page with price and market data for the shopper. The page calls it free ("all for free," "No Cost") and says 10,000+ dealers use it. That's CarStory's own count; I can't check it.
- Appraise is appraisal and sales forecasting, built on CarStory's VINSpect and GoPrice tools and its market data.
- Track is inventory monitoring: a Sales Forecast and "Sales Scout" alerts.
Appraise and Track have "Sign Up" buttons and no published price anywhere I could find. Don't assume they're free because Promote is. Get the number in writing.
The market report widget is mostly a franchise-site thing. CarStory's FAQ says it plugs into big dealer-website vendors like Dealer.com, CDK, Dealer Inspire and DealerOn, often with a "flip of a switch." If your website comes from a smaller provider, ask whether the widget works there before counting on it.
Is it worth putting your cars on CarStory?
For free syndication, the math is simple: if it costs nothing and the leads reach you, more places your car shows up is better than fewer. Where dealers get burned with "free" listing sites isn't the price. It's leads going to an inbox nobody reads, and cars still showing after they sold.
CarStory isn't one of the big three. A shopper on your lot has probably looked at CarGurus, Cars.com or Autotrader; I covered how those compare in CarGurus vs. Autotrader vs. Cars.com. I don't have a number for how many shoppers CarStory sends a small independent lot, and CarStory doesn't publish one by market. So treat it like any other free channel: turn it on, tag the leads, and see what you actually get after 60 days. My post on tracking where your leads come from walks through that.
In DealerVLO, every lead you add gets a source (Phone, Walk-in, Facebook, Listing site or Other), so you can at least see how many came from listing sites and put the shopper's name in the notes. It won't split leads site by site for you; that part is a note you type.
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How your cars get onto CarStory
CarStory's pages don't explain the plumbing. Promote says it syndicates your listings, and you sign up through carstory.ai's contact page. It doesn't say whether it reads your website, takes a feed from your DMS, or gets your cars from a partner.
One practical warning: older CarStory press releases send dealers to dealers.carstory.com. That address returned a 404 when I checked on November 10, 2026. Use carstory.ai.
Here's where DealerVLO fits, stated carefully. DealerVLO sends a daily inventory feed to Vast, which Vast told us publishes dealer listings on Carfax.com. Vast hasn't told us whether the same feed also lands your cars on CarStory.com or Promote's partner sites, so I won't claim it does. When you talk to CarStory, ask directly: "My DMS already sends you a Vast feed. Does that cover CarStory.com, or do I need something else?"
Turning on the Vast feed in DealerVLO takes one checkbox. Under Settings → List my cars on other sites, tick Carfax.com; no Vast ID is needed. It's included in the $29 a month with the DMS, your website, and the CarGurus, Cars.com and Autotrader feeds. Whatever CarStory or Carfax charges for its side is between you and them. The full breakdown of what the Carfax side costs is in the cheapest way to get your inventory on Carfax.com.
Where CarStory leads go
This is the part to set up before anything goes live. CarStory's Promote FAQ says all leads are sent in ADF format, the standard lead format car CRMs read, "to the lead address or addresses of your choice."
If you run a franchise-style CRM, that address is its ADF inbox. If you don't, use the email someone on your lot actually reads every day, not an info@ address that forwards nowhere.
DealerVLO doesn't import leads from listing sites automatically. When a CarStory lead hits your inbox, add it with the Add lead form: name, phone or email, the car from your inventory, source "Listing site," and a follow-up date. The next morning it's on your Due list, and on days something is due you get one email listing those leads. That's simple, but it beats a lead sitting unread. If you're losing them after the first reply, converting online leads to appointments covers the follow-up.
Keep the listing honest
Two things go wrong on every syndication site, CarStory included.
Sold cars that won't die. If a car stays up after it's sold, you waste a shopper's time and eat a bad first impression. Ask CarStory how fast a sold car comes down. In DealerVLO, a car marked sold drops off your website right away and off the listing sites with the next daily feed. It's once a day, not real time.
Price that doesn't match. Shoppers compare. If CarStory, CarGurus and your own site show three different prices, the call starts with an argument. DealerVLO sends the same price to the website and every feed (the internet price, or the asking price if none is set), so change it in one place. Watch fees too: several sites now expect advertised prices to include mandatory dealer fees. I went through CarGurus' version of that rule in how CarGurus deal ratings actually work.
If your cars aren't showing up where they should, the usual causes are in why your cars aren't showing on listing sites.
Before you sign up
Get the answers in an email, not just on the call. "Free" is easy to say on the phone; "free, which sites, and here's how you cancel" in writing is what you want.
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Frequently asked questions
What is CarStory? CarStory is the car-shopping and dealer-data business run by Vast. It has two sides: carstory.com, a site where shoppers search new and used cars from dealers, and carstory.ai, where dealers sign up for CarStory's products (Promote, Appraise and Track). As of November 10, 2026, vast.com redirects to carstory.com, and the site footers read "CarStory and Vast."
Is CarStory free for dealers? CarStory Promote is described as free on carstory.ai: it syndicates your listings to sites including Car and Driver, Autoblog and CarStory.com, and adds a market report to your website. The pages for Appraise and Track publish no price, so ask CarStory sales for a written quote on those.
How do I get my cars on CarStory.com? CarStory's Promote page says it syndicates dealer listings to CarStory.com and other sites, and you sign up through carstory.ai. It doesn't publish how your inventory is collected, so ask CarStory which feed it uses for your account. DealerVLO already sends a daily feed to Vast, the company behind CarStory, for Carfax.com listings; ask CarStory whether that same feed covers CarStory.com for you.
Where do CarStory leads go? CarStory's Promote FAQ says all leads are sent in ADF format to the lead address or addresses you choose. If you run DealerVLO, point that address at the inbox you work leads from; DealerVLO doesn't import leads from listing sites automatically, so you add them with the Add lead form.
Is CarStory the same as Carfax? No. Carfax is a separate company. The link is Vast: Vast runs CarStory, and Vast is also the partner DealerVLO sends its Carfax.com listing feed to. Carfax's own listing rules, including that its Car Listings upgrade is for CARFAX Advantage dealers, are set by Carfax. More on that in Carfax Advantage for dealers.
Does CarStory still work with dealers in 2026? Its dealer site was live on November 10, 2026, with 2026 footers and a sales line (888-685-8227). One old address is dead: dealers.carstory.com, the signup page in CarStory's older press releases, returns a 404. Sign up through carstory.ai instead.
The bottom line
CarStory is Vast's shopper site and dealer toolset. Its Promote product says it syndicates your cars to CarStory.com, Car and Driver and Autoblog for free and sends leads wherever you point them. Turn it on if the answers to the questions above check out, set the lead address before anything goes live, and judge it on the leads you actually get.
The bigger cost is usually getting your cars out to all these sites in the first place. DealerVLO sends your inventory to CarGurus, Cars.com, Autotrader and Carfax.com every day, with your DMS and dealer website, for $29 a month. Start your free 14-day trial.
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